Educational institutions, such as schools and universities, constantly seek ways to leverage technology to effectively educate their students. Some schools have attempted to utilize students' mobile devices (such as cell phones, tablets, and laptops) for portions of the learning experience due to the widespread proliferation of these devices. But mobile devices have also proven to be a distraction in a classroom or home environment, and in some cases, can be used as a tool for cheating.
Attempts to manage student devices in a classroom setting have been largely unsuccessful. In many educational settings, teachers ban mobile devices despite the potential efficiency benefits over pen and paper, because the potential distraction and cheating risks are too high. When an instructor pauses from teaching to request that a student turn off a ringing phone, this interrupts the flow of teaching and learning. Additionally, students can use their unmanaged mobile devices to access the Internet during a test or while performing a homework assignment at home to look up answers to questions.
Current technological solutions for limiting use of mobile devices in the classroom are largely device-specific applications that allow parents to place restrictions on their children's devices. But these solutions do not address the overarching problem of managing all the mobile devices amongst a group of students. Moreover, students often do not have access to reliable communication networks when they are at home or otherwise away from school. This is particularly true in less developed areas of the world. In such instances, current solutions do not allow for remotely managing a student's mobile device when it is away from school or not connected to a network.
A teacher's inability to assess students' attendance, participation, and performance when they are both in and away from the classroom, while simultaneously preventing students from being distracted by their devices or leveraging them to cheat, is a significant problem. Moreover, a system for managing a plurality of student devices in this fashion cannot be overly complex or cumbersome or a teacher will not make practical use of it.
Based on at least these problems, a need exists for systems that better manage mobile devices to enhance students' learning experiences, regardless of whether a student is in class, at home, or able to maintain a persistent connection to a communication network. Moreover, intuitive interfaces and workflows are needed for a teacher to make practical use of mobile device management systems.